I guess it would be best for my liberal street cred if I told you that I cut up my American Express card joyfully and with deliberate, symbolic timing the day after Christmas. After all, there are few symbols as potent in the representation of American consumerism as American Express. Don't leave home without it, you know.
In actuality, I cut up my American Express card today with more than a little nostalgia, and I didn't do it to protest Christmas overconsumption. Put very simply, I couldn't justify paying a $90 annual fee for a card that doesn't give me any value added. It was a business decision, spurred on by some particularly heinous customer service a couple of years back, right after they must have decided U.S.-based calling centers were just too much of a luxury, even for a luxury brand. The weird melancholy I'm feeling about the decision stems from, I think, the acknowledgment that we're not going back overseas--or to the lifestyle we were leading there--any time soon.
One of the main reasons I kept my card all those years--nearly 14, to be exact--was because they really did offer some good benefits if you were living abroad. I could cash a personal check from the States, an option that was occasionally very important. For several years in Prague, they ran the best rental car company, until they sub-contracted it out (sensing a theme here?). I could have had mail delivered to me at an American Express office, if I'd chosen to. I never did, but there it was. It was like the grown-up version of the McDonald's theory of American security: No matter where you are, you're never too far from a McDonald's or an American Express.
Plus--and can I admit this, as a liberal, and have ANY street cred left?--I liked the feeling of having an American Express green card. Not everybody had one, and I liked that it taught me how to use credit responsibly, at least until the dollar tanked. I always said it should be the only card college kids are allowed to have, and only then if American Express holds them to the "charge" card concept of having to pay off the entire balance at the end of the month. Instead, the companies--AmEx included--hand out credit cards to college students like perfume samples at the cosmetics counter and allow students to get into debt up to their eyeballs--and perpetuate a totally unsustainable lifestyle--before they even have their first job. But that's another topic. We have come here to mourn the passing of my American Express card, and that is what I shall do.
I have to say that the customer service rep didn't try too hard to keep me as a customer. Certainly she was courteous, polite, and offered me a nominal credit to stay--plus, I think she was actually in America, which would be a nice change if true--but there were no AOL-like histrionics, no rending of garments to convince me not to cancel. The recorded voice at the end of the call told me I could destroy my card in whatever way I deemed appropriate. If I bury the pieces in the backyard, will a money tree grow? Maybe I'll make a little shrine to our (relatively) carefree, mortgage-free twenties and early thirties when the card represented airline tickets to Istanbul or enough gas to drive us to someplace fun for the weekend. It's the end of an era.
And with that, I'm leaving for headquarters to turn in my liberal card.